Living unicorns that aren't rhinos, narwhals or one-horned goats?
Ah, so you're one of
those people. The ones who refuse to acknowledge the existence of real creatures because they did not
perfectly fit your preconceived notions of what they
should be.
I ask: Do you think
panthers exist?
The medieval bestiaries were not 100% accurate about the appearance of the panther either, yet we in larger society are still willing to call the panther a "panther", even if it turns out not to have sweet-scented breath capable of luring in prey, as the medieval scholars described.
Yet society will not extend the same courtesy it gives to the panther to the other beasts that it was simply wrong about.
When it comes to people of the past we judge them as if they are either 100% right, or 100% wrong. We are forbidden, for whatever reason, to considering the likelihood that they are correct and incorrect. If the unicorn wasn't precisely what people assumed it looked like after the long game of telephone communicating the original beast to people in Europe, then we insist that the people of the past were
100% wrong and further insist that the unicorn does not exist, rather than assume the people of the past were only
partially wrong, and the unicorn merely does not match the artistic interpretation of the described creature.
Society is
so uncharitable to the people of the past. Unless the medieval bestiaries describe things with 100% accuracy we insist, naively, that the animal is thus fiction.
The only exceptions to this seem to be the panther and the walrus, two mythical animals who we acknowledge that the people of the past were
partially correct on, while being also
partially incorrect. Panthers and walruses, the only beings of myth that we are permitted to have a nuanced belief of.
